


Six Feet Underground

by Blue_Ginkgo



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Brotherhood, Canon Compliant, Drinking, Ghost Number Six | Ben Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, M/M, Season 2 References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 00:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29742459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Ginkgo/pseuds/Blue_Ginkgo
Summary: Talking to Dave at the diner didn’t go quite as planned…A short alternate version of the aftermath of that event: Ben tries to contain the damage as Klaus has a teeny tiny breakdown.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Kudos: 26





	Six Feet Underground

He stumbles outside the liquor store, the first bottle of gin already half-empty, a hazy smile on his face.

“Yeeeah, finally. This feels great! Ha!”

Klaus laughs, hard, the pressure on his chest clearly lifting as the alcohol starts to work its magic. After three years of sobriety, the gin now must be hitting like a motherfucker.

“For fuck’s sake, brother, I can’t believe you’re throwing everything away… What do you think you’re getting this way?”

“Blah blah blah. This is what I’m getting,” Klaus lifts the bottle in Ben’s general direction in some sort of half-assed toast. “Head in the clouds! Woohoo!”

“Yeah, whatever, let’s just go home, ok? Ten minutes and we’ll be there, Klaus, come on…” groans Ben, putting up his signature annoyed face to hide the disappointment and worry.

He really thought his brother was going to stay clean longer than that, but he should have known better. To Klaus’s credit, the whole situation at the diner had been awful. Painful to watch. Ben was just there watching the tragedy unfold, he can’t even imagine how much painful must have been actually experiencing it.

“Look, Benny, pigeons!” shouts Klaus, emptying and discarding the bottle, and running towards them. He keeps running after they take flight.

“Look, I’m chasing ‘em, I’m –” He trips on his own feet and rolls over, holding the paper bag to his chest protectively.

Still half-lying on the floor, he takes out a new bottle – it’s rum, now – and opens it, an ecstatic look on his face. “Missed you, sweetie!”

He takes long swings from the bottle, murmurs something along the line of “so warm, so distracting”, and Ben thinks of how he has _not_ missed this. The last few years in the Sixties have been weird and sometimes difficult, especially at the beginning, but also good for Klaus in many ways. And now this unexpected binge-drinking session is filling Ben with anxiety, because he knows there’s a fair chance that this is not gonna be a one-off.

“Get up, Klaus, let’s go.”

They walk for a few minutes, Ben silent and concerned, Klaus chuckling to himself and happily recounting the story of when at fourteen he snuck out of the Academy and spent the night drinking rum with the skanky components of a country band.

“You have no idea how fucking wasted they were, Ben! And then at sunrise they-“

“Hush! Look… I think you’ve got guests.”

The brothers are close enough to the mansion, now, to hear a loud chatter inside. Ben nudges (tries, at least) his brother towards their parked van. Klaus follows mindlessly his orders, ducking behind the van just in time, and they watch discreetly as a group of weirdly clothed people walk past them and right into the building.

“Shiiit! Are those…?”

“Yup, Klaus, your devoted disciples. You avoided a merry cult reunion by a thread. Thanks to me. You really should –” Ben shuts up noticing that he’s talking to himself. Klaus is drinking some more, trying to stifle his hysterical chuckling with little result.

“Come on, Klaus. Let’s go sit down somewhere else, ok?” sighs Ben when the coast is clear again, and he leads his brother to a quiet spot of the park among the trees, as far as he can from the building.

Good god, thinks the ghost looking at his brother as he sits on a log, they dodged _this_ bullet at least. That’s an encounter they really didn’t need, those weirdos can be really annoying and today is not the best moment to deal with the whole cult drama. There is a reason if Klaus decided to run away from them, after all. The _other_ encounter, on the other hand… that one surely didn’t went well.

Ben hasn’t stop worrying since Klaus parked their car in front of Dave’s store that day, revealing his intention of meeting his lover from the past. Besides from suspecting that messing with the timeline like this might lead to unexpected consequences, he immediately knew, _he knew_ , that his brother was going to have his heart broken. But Klaus was hellbent on trying.

How special must have been this man to Klaus, to inspire such devotion? How did their relationship developed? And how difficult must have been to be a soldier in love during the war… Klaus has been Ben’s whole life, literally, for so long. Their existences have been so intertwined since Ben’s death that it feels strange and confusing to Ben to have missed this crucial chapter of his brother’s life. Then again, he’s not sure that he could’ve been strong enough to witness Klaus facing the hardship of Vietnam... He’s immensely grateful that Dave was by his brother’s side the whole time.

Ben finds himself wondering how it must be like to be in love with someone like that, and for a moment he feels jealous of Klaus for having the chance to experience it. Then the memory of his brother’s destroyed face at the diner hits him and he immediately feels like shit. Gulping, he focuses again on the man sitting a few meters away.

“Are you alright? Your lip’s still bleeding…”

“My…” Klaus touches tentatively his split lip, with a weirdly surprised look. As if in his alcoholic euphoria he had pushed the memories of the whole disaster with Dave out of his mind. He hisses, eyes darkening. He starts mumbling to himself, clearly upset. Takes another long gulp from the bottle. He’s not laughing anymore.

They stay in silence for a few minutes, Ben cursing himself for putting an end to his brother’s “happy-drunk” state.

“You were right… It was stupid, reaching out to him. Selfish.” Klaus clutches the bottle so hard his knuckles go white.

“That’s not true, Klaus. You had good intentions and –”

“You know how they say, Benny. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And bleeding hearts, apparently.” Klaus’s voice sounds bitter yet surprisingly alert, considering his current state.

“Can’t you see the mess I made? I shocked him, got him in trouble with his uncle, I…” he chokes up, overwhelmed. “I made him punch me! I forced him to use his fists, _him_ , the sweetest guy on Earth… He’ll be disgusted with himself for this, I know, he’ll blame himself and-”

“That’s not your fault, Klaus. Don’t ever think that.” Ben's voice is determined, strong. “He hurt you, and I know he was pressured and shaken, and he didn’t really want to, but he did and it’s not your fault!” He ends up shouting, and Klaus is looking at him with surprised, wide eyes.

Ben shakily exhales, trying to regain some control. “At first I thought you simply wanted to meet him to indulge yourself, and yeah, that would have been selfish. But I was wrong, you’re trying to save him. And yes, maybe the words you used weren’t exactly perfect, but… you tried.”

Klaus’s gaze is lost in the distance, unfocused. Hand gripping on the bottle like it’s a lifeline.

Ben bites his lip, unsure of what do say, what to do. All these years spent by his brother’s side, watching him scraping the bottom, fighting his demons and barely getting by, and it still hurts when his pain becomes so apparent on his face. I should be used to feel this helpless, thinks somberly Ben, and yet…

“I should have saved him.” The words come out hushed and shaky from Klaus’s mouth. “Try and bring him with me with the briefcase before – before it was too late. And – and now, I failed again, I…”

As his murmurs turn into whimpers and quiet sobs, Ben sits down next to him and whispers meaningless comforting words, wishing he could just hold him tight, like any good sibling would do.

After a while, Klaus stops crying, his panting calms down and the shaking of his shoulders subsides. He keeps his eyes firmly shut.

“I am so proud of you.” Ben’s voice breaks the silence. “You risked al lot going into that diner, you really put your heart on the line.”

“My heart is six feet underground.” Klaus opens his eyes as he speaks, gaze still unfocused and far away, voice rough. “It has been since the day I got off that bus, with Dave’s blood on my hands.”

In a couple of seconds, Klaus is on his feet again, taking a last gulp of rum and letting the half-empty bottle fall to the ground. His eyes, red-rimmed and shiny, meet Ben’s wide and teary ones, and he shoots him a small, pained smile. He brushes away his own tears with the back of his “goodbye” hand, swaying lightly.

“C’mon, Benny-boy. Let’s go see if Allison has something better to drink.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thanks for reading this, I hope you enjoyed :)
> 
> And if you got the reference to the Foo Fighters' song "Chasing Birds", yaaay! Endless kudos to you <3


End file.
